Maggie Haberman Describes Natalie Harp as Trump’s ‘Binkie’

The New York Times’ White House Correspondent Maggie Haberman described President Donald Trump’s aide Natalie Harp as the president’s “binkie” in an interview with CNN on Friday.

After host Wolf Blitzer asked if the dynamic between the president and Harp comes down to the latter being Trump’s “biggest fan,” Haberman indicated she agreed.

“I think that that’s a lot of it, yes. I mean, there’s nothing else that goes beyond that in our reporting. Trump, as I think we’ve all watched over a long period of time, likes to have sycophants around. It doesn’t mean exclusively, but that has gotten more pronounced,” she answered.

Haberman continued, “And, you know, devotion is the coin of the realm in his world and in his larger orbit. She is the most pronounced example of it that I can see in recent years. And I think the other piece, too, Wolf, is she doesn’t have, that we know of, and according to people we’ve spoken to in the president’s world over several years now, she doesn’t really do much outside of work. She works constantly for him. That is something that he has a huge amount of value in.”

She added:

I described her the other day as, a binkie, for lack of a better way of putting it, a comfort blanket. There are men who have played that role for him too. One of them would be Boris Epstein, about whom … his legal adviser, of whom the president describes him as his psychiatrist and says, sometimes you just want somebody to tell you everything is going to be okay. That is a lot of what the president values.

A binkie is a nickname for pacifiers used to soothe infants and babies.

Harp’s relationship with the president has been under the microscope since Sunday, when Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) referenced her while speaking to supporters.

Ossoff said of Trump, “He golfs and trades stocks. See, he doesn’t want to do the job; he wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie to their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar.”

Watch the above via CNN.

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